George Gunn was born in Thurso in 1956. He left school at 16 and spent two years fishing in the North Sea. For seven years he worked on semi-submersible drillings in the North and Irish Seas.

1982-1989 Joint co-ordinator of the Edinburgh Playwrights' Workshop

1983 Writer-in-residence at the Aberdeen Alternative Festival

1984-1986 Writer-in-residence with Fife Local Initiatives project
-community musical Archie and the Aliens
-video programme on the history of Methil, By Coal and Sail

1985 Scottish Arts Council Writers Bursary

1987-1991 Writer/Dramaturg for Scottish Youth Theatre
-co-ordinated Young Writers Festival

1992-1994 Writer-in-residence with Banff & Buchan District Council
-ran the Five Toons Poetry Festival
-editorship of literary magazine “The Broken Fiddle”
-compiled anthology of Northeast writing, Breaking New Ground.
- ran the Banff & Buchan Playwrights' Workshop

1992- 2010 Artistic Director of Grey Coast Theatre Company.
-over 50 professional and community productions
- e.g. combined arts projects with Castletown Primary School (The Orkneyinga Saga, 1997-98) and Golspie Primary School (The Year of the Burnings, 1999-00), 4 Wick Primary Schools (The Song Of Wick, 2003), 5 Sutherland Primaries (The Big Song of Sutherland, 2005), Dunbeath and Lybster Primary Schools (Butcher’s Broom, 2005 and on going until 2007), Miller Academy Primary School, Thurso (The Mighty Gap, P6 & 7, 2008) The Ancient Fire by Neil Gunn (extracts performed by The Skraelings at Light in The North, 2008.)

-new writing development with professional and community writers

1999 Royal Literary Fund Award

2000 Scottish Arts Council Playwright’s Bursary

2001 Orkney Islands Council Creative Writing Fellowship

2003 - 2008 Playwrighting Tutor to the HNC Touring Theatre Course at North Highland College/University of the Highlands and Islands

2005 Hi-Arts Literary Award

2005 Playwrights’ Studio Scotland “Creating Space” award

2006 Scottish Arts Council Writers Bursary

2006 Atlantic Forest, Scotia Review poetry and music project with Gordon Gunn and Brian MacAlpine

2007 Writer in Residence Strathnaver Museum, Sutherland
- A Walk in Strathnaver: a poetry music performance project with S1 and S2 Farr High School and the composer/musician Andy Thorburn
- the inaugural Rob Donn/Ian Grimble lecture and Ceilidh, Farr Bay Inn

2007 Winds of Change, tutor, drama outreach project North Highland College
and 4 High Schools in Caithness and Sutherland

2008 A Walk In Strathnaver, a mixed-media visual art exhibition with Strathnaver Museum Artist in Residence, Donna Murray, featuring a poem sequence in memory of Rob Donn Mackay, tour of the North Highlands

2008 Royal Literary Fund Award

2008 In The Pictish Navy and Song For S?m, a poetry/music collaboration with Andy Thorburn, DISTIL Showcase, The Tolbooth, Stirling

2008 Strowma, runner up in the Robert McClellan Playwrighting award

2009 Peggy Ramsay Award

2009 “Homecoming” poem, Scotland’s Global Impact (Year of Homecoming) Conference, Eden Court Theatre, Inverness

2009 “Piper” poem, Silver: An Aberdeen Anthology, Polygon. Edited by Alan Spence and Hazel Hutchison

2009 “Plastic Caithness Scots”, talk as part of Ten Things That Changed The Highlands, Highland Homecoming, Ross Institute, Halkirk

2009 Caithness Voices, Caithness Arts and Castlehill Heritage Centre, community song project in Caithness primary schools

2009 Scottish Poetry Library Writer in Residence at The Ceilidh Place, Ullapool

2009 “Decommissioning Blues” workshop by National Theatre of Scotland, directed by John Tiffany

2010 Creative Writing Tutor at North Highland College

2010 Opera at Caithness Horizons. A week long performance project with Thurso High School, Scottish Opera and Eden Court.

2010 Creative Scotland Writers Bursary

2010 “A Filidh From The Province of The Cat”; essay in Borne On The Carrying Stream; The Legacy of Hamish Henderson; a book of essays on Hamish Henderson, edited by Professor Paddy Bort, Grace Note Publications in association with The Carrying Stream Festival

2010 “Northern Exposure”; a celebration of Grey Coast Theatre Company and the poetry and music of Caithness, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh

2010 “Stroma”; an exhibition of poems and photographs of Stroma by Roddy Ritchie, Caithness Horizons and Highland tour

2011 Interview with Robert Martin, Keltia Magazine, France

Regular contributor to most Scottish literary magazines and to local and national press, The Scottish Review, including the column “From the Deck of the Pictish Navy” for the John O’Groat Journal (Caithness).

Frequent readings, writers’ workshops and talks.

Founder member of Caithness Arts

Member of The Caithness Arts Forum

Committee member of the Neil Gunn festival, “Light In The North”

Member of Scottish Society of Playwrights’

Creative Group member for Northern Connections, a joint production/collaboration between Swedish (Vesterbotten) and Scottish (Highlands and Islands) theatre makers.

Member of judging panel Robert McClellan Centenary Playwrighting Award and playwrights workshop leader Arran Arts Festival, 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

Publications

The Winter House Caithness Books 1982
Into the Anarchic Pulteney Press 1985
Sting Chapman 1991
The Gold of Kildonan/Songs of the Grey Coast* Chapman 1992
On the Rigs Keepdate Publishing 1992
Whins Chapman 1996
Quiet The Dog * Traverse Highland Shorts 1999
Black Fish Scotia Now 2004
Winter Barley Chapman 2006
The Atlantic Forest Two Ravens Press 2008
A Walk In Strathnaver Strathnaver Museum 2008
October Rain Pulteney Pressings 2009
The Silver Birches Of Kildonan Pulteney Pressings 2009
Atomic City* Fairplay Press 2010
Egil, Son of the Nightwolf* Fairplay Press 2010

Forthcoming
Stroma Big Box 2011

 

 

 

Translation

Taighean Na Mara* Tosg 1996
Huit Poètes Écossais Contemporains L’Harmattan, Paris 2005
Tilleadh gu Dachaigh, Homecoming Scotland 2009
*plays, the rest poetry

George Gunn

Plays produced to date

1984 Roughneck (Traverse)
1985 The Poet (Traverse)
1985 Archie and the Aliens (FLIP tour of Fife)
1985 Emma, Emma – Red & Black (United Artists Scotland, Mayfest)
1986 The Crofting Act (Eden Court, Highland Tour)
1987 A Cloud of Witnesses (Scottish Youth Theatre)
1988 The Province of the Cat (United Artists, Highland Tour)
1989 The Gold of Kildonan (Eden Court, Highland Tour)
1990 Seen from the Law (Dundee Arts Centre)
1992 Songs of the Grey Coast (Grey Coast Theatre, Highland Tour)
1993 Pyrates (The Man in the Moon, London)
1994 The Great Bunillidh Volcano (Grey Coast Theatre Community Play, Helmsdale)
1995 Piper at the Gates (BBC Radio Scotland/Radio 4)
1996 Flags (Grey Coast Theatre Community Play, Castletown)
1996 The Niss (Grey Coast Theatre, Famous Grouse House, Edinburgh)
1996 Goilladh (BBC Radio Scotland/Radio 4)
1996 The Houses of the Sea (Tosg, Highland Tour)
1998 The Orkneyinga Saga (Grey Coast Theatre schools project, Castletown)
1998 Camster (Grey Coast Theatre, Scottish Tour)
1998 Egil, Son of the Night Wolf (Grey Coast Theatre, Highland Tour)
1999 Quiet the Dog (Highland Shorts, Traverse Theatre, Highland Tour)
1999 Atomic City (Grey Coast Theatre, Scottish Tour)
2000 The Year of the Burnings (Grey Coast Theatre Schools Project, Golspie)
2002 Remembering Magnus (Grey Coast, Mill Theatre Thurso)
2003 The Song Of Wick (Grey Coast Theatre Schools Project, Wick)
2004 The Whisky Express (Highland Festival Tour)
2005 The Big Song Of Sutherland (Grey Coast Theatre Schools Project, Dornoch)
2005 Oedipus The Chief (Playwrights Studio Scotland/ Grey Coast, Lyth Arts Centre)
2005 The Bear King’s Daughters’ (Close Encounters, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow)
2005 Butcher’s Broom (Grey Coast Theatre Schools Project, East Caithness)
2005 Red Fish (Grey Coast/SAC music commission for Andy Thorburn, Lyth Arts
Centre)
2006 Oedipus at the Split Stone (Playwrights’ Studio Scotland/Grey Coast, North Highland College Drama Studio)
2006 The Last Tree In Dunnet (Scotia Review, Eden Court, Crossroads Primary School)
2006 Butcher’s Broom, Part two (Grey Coast Theatre Schools Project, East Caithness)
2007 Butcher’s Broom, Part three (Grey Cost Theatre Schools Project, East Caithness)
2007 Antigone (Grey Cost Theatre, Caithness Arts Festival)
2007 Houses of the Sea (Drama na h-Alba Theatre Festival, Inverness)
2008 The Mighty Gap (Grey Coast Theatre Schools Project, Miller Academy, Thurso)
2008 Caithnesia (Grey Coast Theatre, Caithness Arts Festival)
2009 Fields of Barley (Grey Coast Theatre, Caithness Arts Festival and subsequent tour)
2009 The New Purgatory (Queen Margaret University, Roxy Art House, Edinburgh)
2010 Welcome To The Anthropocene (Caithness Horizons)

 

Film

2009 Balancing On The Edge Of The World Big Box Films
(Treatment and Screenplay commission on-going)

 

Recent Radio Series

1997 Two series of "Coastlines", BBC Radio Scotland
1998 Two series of “Islands”, BBC Radio Scotland
1999/2000/01 Two series of “The Peat Bog Diaries”, BBC Radio 4

 

 

References

Joy Hendry Douglas Dunn
Chapman Publishing St Andrews University
4 Broughton Place St Andrews
Edinburgh Fife

Donald Campbell
85 Spottiswoode Street
Edinburgh

 

 

 

 

 

CONTACT DETAILS

George Gunn
14 Henderson Court
Thurso
Caithness
KW14 7LB

Tel. 01847 892 599
07751778939
peedie@urbanbothy.fslife.co.uk

AGENT
John Cairns
john@johncairns.org.uk
tel. 07990 882 487